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IELTS Matching Practice
IELTS Matching Practice
IELTS Matching Practice
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.
Love stories
“Love stories” are often associated – at least in the popular imagination – with
fairy tales, adolescent day dreams, Disney movies and other frivolous pastimes. For
psychologists developing taxonomies2 of affection and attachment, however, this is an
area of rigorous academic pursuit. Beginning in the early 1970s with the
groundbreaking contributions of John Alan Lee, researchers have developed
classifications that they believe better characterise our romantic predispositions. This
involves examining not a single, universal, emotional expression (“love”), but rather a
series of divergent behaviours and narratives that each has an individualised purpose,
desired outcome and state of mind. Lee’s gritty methodology painstakingly involved
participants matching 170 typical romantic encounters (e.g., “The night after I met
X…”) with nearly 1500 possible reactions (“I could hardly get to sleep” or “I wrote X
a letter”). The patterns unknowingly expressed by respondents culminated in a
taxonomy of six distinct love “styles” that continue to inform research in the area
forty years later.
The first of these styles – eros – is closely tied in with images of romantic love
that are promulgated in Western popular culture. Characteristic of this style is a
passionate emotional intensity, a strong physical magnetism – as if the two partners
were literally being “pulled” together – and a sense of inevitability about the
relationship. A related but more frantic style of love called mania involves an
obsessive, compulsive attitude toward one’s partner. Vast swings in mood from
ecstasy to agony – dependent on the level of attention a person is receiving from his
or her partner – are typical of manic love.
The final two styles of love seem to lack aspects of emotion and reciprocity
altogether. The ludus style envisions relationships primarily as a game in which it is
best to “play the field” or experience a diverse set of partners over time. Mutually-
gratifying outcomes in relationships are not considered necessary, and deception of a
partner and lack of disclosure about one’s activities are also typical. While Lee found
that college students in his study overwhelmingly disagreed with the tenets of this
style, substantial numbers of them acted in a typically ludic style while dating, a
finding that proves correct the deceit inherent in ludus. Pragma lovers also
2
Taxonomy = the science of classifying and categorising data.
Steinberg also explores how our love stories interact with the love stories of
our partners. What happens when someone who sees love as art collides with
someone who sees love as business? Can a Sewing story (love is what you make it)
co-exist with a Theatre story (love is a script with predictable acts, scenes and lines)?
Certainly, it is clear that we look for partners with love stories that complement and
are compatible with our own narratives. But they do not have to be an identical match.
Someone who sees love as mystery and art, for example, might locate that mystery
better in a partner who views love through a lens of business and humour. Not all love
stories, however, are equally well predisposed to relationship longevity; stories that
view love as a game, as a kind of surveillance or as an addiction are all unlikely to
prove durable.
Research on love stories continues apace. Defying the myth that rigorous
science and the romantic persuasions of ordinary people are incompatible, this
research demonstrates that good psychology can clarify and comment on the way we
give affection and form attachments.
Look at the following statements (Questions 27–34) and the list of styles in the box
below.
Write the correct letter, A–F, in boxes 27–34 on your answer sheet.